De Mailly looked at the girl in surprise. She was certainly unlike any woman that he had ever met. "Forgive me," he said, earnestly. "I did not understand you. I do admire and respect this work of yours. My gratitude—how shall I express it? There is, indeed, little that one can say to the preserver of his life—"
"Please, don't!" she cried, impulsively, and then stopped. He was regarding her so earnestly, and his look said so much more than his tongue had ever done, that she found no words at her command. So they fell into silence as once more they approached the house.
Dr. Carroll, returning on the day before from his shooting, and, wearied by the dulness of Annapolis in mid-summer, kept his promise and came out to see Deborah. He found her, ignorant of his arrival, preparing her retort for the distillation of the water-hemlock, while Claude, willingly pressed into service, had gone to the kitchen to obtain a lighted coal for the tripod of charcoal. An addition to the equipment of the room had recently been made. Beside the cupboard in the corner stood a good-sized cage, its top and bottom made of pine boards held together by narrow wooden slats nailed upon all four sides. Within this prison of the condemned sat a half-grown tortoise-shell tabby, presented yesterday to the establishment by Sambo. As Deborah took up her hemlock and with careful hands began to strip away its leaves and blossoms, she glanced now and then at her prisoner with an expression half of pity and half of speculative interest. The animal looked very comfortable on its bed of grass, its toilet just completed, with slow eyes blinking at the light; never a suspicion in its head of a possible swift death at the hands of the slender girl at the table yonder. The stillness was interrupted by the entrance of the doctor.
"Good-morning to you, Mistress Debby! At work, eh? Oho! Water-hemlock!"
"No. This is Maculatum. See the leaves—spotted. Is this as poisonous as the other, do you think?"
The doctor chuckled. "Thou'rt a born botanist, Debby. This poisonous? 'Tis historic. Socrates died by it. 'Tis as well obtained by crushing in alcohol, though. Did you bring the root? Now that was carelessness. The root is most virulent—delightfully virulent. You should be sent back to get it, only that I am not here to distil this morning.—Ah, Monsieur Claude! Good-day! Are you turned neophyte?"
Claude, with a shovelful of embers, had halted in the doorway. At Carroll's question he smiled and came forward. "I should be glad if I might stay and look on. I am wofully ignorant in these matters."
Deborah took the shovel from his hands, emptying its contents carefully into the tripod. "Thank you. Be seated, if you care to watch us."
"By all means, sit yonder, de Mailly, and look on. Miss Travis is preparing some Conium maculatum for distillation, though she will get a poor result from the mere leaves and flowers. And behold in me, monsieur, the conscienceless wretch about to destroy life in that hapless pussy, for the mere gratification of criminal instinct.—What's this, Deborah?"
The doctor's change of tone was so sudden and so marked that the girl turned quickly about to behold him standing over the fungi which she had placed at the far end of the table.